“Truly We Live in a Dying World” A 19th Century Home in Mourning

“Truly We Live in a Dying World”
A 19th Century Home in Mourning

Exhibition opens October 8

Step back in time to 1865, when family patriarch Seabury Tredwell died at home in his second floor bedroom. Poignant scenes of death and grief recreated in the House explore mid-19th century mourning customs. Pay your last respects at his deathbed upstairs, or join the mourning in the double parlor, hung with black crepe and set for a mid-19th century funeral.

On display, evocative photographs by Hal Hirshorn recreating the 1865 death and funeral of Seabury Tredwell, and rarely exhibited items of Tredwell family mourning dress and accessories from the collection, including jewelry made of hair and jet, a black net veil, several bodices and shawls, and two 1870s mourning gowns.